Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is the best I have read recently - it's set in the future and is basically an adventure book about a computer game that references eighties culture a lot. No-one I have recommended it to has been able to put it down whether they like the eighties or understand computer games - and I felt like a kid again reading it - total enjoyment and (almost) complete suspension of disbelief.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was the other really good one I read recently but for very different reasons. Other than that Paulo Coelho's early stuff is pretty good and I tend to re-read him if I am between books.

Some NZ writers you might not have been exposed to that write well include Keri Hulme (The Bone People), Barry Crump (A Good Keen Man), Witi Ihimaera (The Matriarch), Janet Frame (An Angel at my Table) or Fiona Kidman (Paddy's Puzzle) but NZ fiction tends to be pretty bleak and depressing so don't go there if you want something light. I also have no idea how accessible they are if you aren't a kiwi.

I am watching this thread with interest as I got book vouchers for christmas so can go on another book buying spree but have no idea what to buy.... I was going to stock up on Georgette Heyer but some of the suggestions here look really good

I've just started reading Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. It's set in a reverse racist dystopia (so whites are the "lower" class) and centres around a nought boy and cross girl and their friendship. It's the first in a trilogy aimed at young adults and I've been meaning to read it for years.

Funny you should ask...I was just talking to my son and he told me he is reading two fascinating books. One is called "The Making of a Chef" and the other is "The Soul of a Chef" and should be read in that order. He isn't a chef nor does he have such aspirations but he found them so interesting. They are non fiction by Michael Ruhlman. He also recommended a book called Cod, about the cod fishing industry. For Christmas he and his SO gave me a book called Salt, which is about the history of salt, or salts place in history. His SO said she has given that book as a gift more than any other. I suggested to my son that he read the James Harriot books, "All Creatures Great and Small" and the rest of that series. Those are some of my favorites.I love Barbara Pym's books about life in small English villages in the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, etc.

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I've never knitted anything I could recognize when it was finished. Actually, I've never finished anything, much to my family's relief.

My mom reads so much, she read 129 books in 2012. She really liked the 1963 Stephen King book (even though she's never read any other Stephen King book). She also like the Eric Larson book (In the Garden of Beasts). One of her favorite non-fiction authors is Simon Winchester; she also loves Rosamund Pilcher. She also loved the Steve Jobs bio by Walter Isaacson.

The latest book she was raving about was Replay by Ken Grimwood. This guy dies in his 40s and comes back as his teenage self, back in the past, but knowing everything he lived through for the next 25 years. So he does things differently, but still dies in his 40s, then comes back as the teenager again, and so forth. It sounds really trippy. She doesn't usually read much sci-fi; I think it has a lot more about the relationships than about the mechanics of time travel. She's kind of on a time travel spree lately and loves Time and Again (she said Stephen King recommended it) and also the Outlander series.

I read only 11 books in 2012, which makes me pretty sad next to her... I read a lot of non-fiction. I quite liked The History of the World in 100 Objects. It is a LARGE book, though. The director of the British Museum pulls out 100 objects from their collection and uses them to tell the story of human global history, about 8 to 10 pages per object. They range from a two-million-year-old handaxe to a modern credit card. I thought it was fascinating.

Oh, such an incredible book! Tolstoy was a fabulous writer. I am rereading All the President's Men. It's like a trip back to 1972. All the news stories, the men (except for Martha Mitchell) are so familiar. The only thing that's different is that I now know who Deep Throat was.